Apple looks set to split October in two. The HomePad smart home hub is pencilled in for 13 October on Mark Gurman’s word, and a second report now says a separate online launch is being lined up for the last week of the month, with multiple sources backing it. So there are two Apple announcements coming this month, not one.
The First Round Is About The Home
The 13 October slot belongs to the HomePad, the screen-equipped hub Apple has been sitting on for a couple of years. Gurman has been careful to call that date fluid, which from him usually means the hardware is ready and the software isn’t quite. A HomePod mini 2 and a new Apple TV 4K with the AI Siri are expected to ride along with it.
The Second Round Is The Macs Everyone Has Been Waiting For
The late October launch is the heavier one. It is expected to bring the touchscreen MacBook, which some leaks are calling the MacBook Ultra, plus an M6 version of the 14 inch MacBook Pro and an M6 iMac. The Ultra is the real story, since it would be the first Mac with an OLED panel and the first with touch, and Gurman has said it arrives on the M5 Pro and M5 Max rather than M6, because the M6 Pro and Max chips were dropped in favour of a later M7 line. That is why the cheaper 14 inch Pro gets M6 while the expensive one doesn’t.
A Mac Studio running the M5 Ultra with as much as 512GB of memory is on the list for the same window, and so is the OLED iPad mini, which has been rumoured for two years and would run the A20 Pro chip from the iPhone 18 Pro.
What Isn’t Settled Yet
The HomePad date is the shaky one. Gurman himself hasn’t committed to October for it, and if it slips, the first launch either shrinks to the HomePod mini and Apple TV or folds into the second. Pricing on the MacBook Ultra hasn’t leaked at all, and after a year of price rises across Apple’s range that number will matter more than the spec sheet.
